Thank you, President Michelle Anderson. Thank you, faculty and staff. Last Thursday I had the privilege of joining dozens of CUNY colleagues in Albany, along with hundreds of students from across New York City and State, to lobby our legislators for full funding for public higher education. What would full funding look like? You will hear shortly from President Anderson about the governor’s proposed Executive Budget, but to be brief: We are not out of the woods, not by a long shot.

Adjusted for inflation, CUNY’s senior colleges experienced a cut of 17 percent from 2008 to 2015 in per-student funding from New York State. There's a lot of ground to make up to offset years of underfunding coupled with increases in undergraduate enrollment. That's why students from all across the city and the state set their alarm clocks for 4 a.m. and rode those buses to Albany, to make an emphatic case that the legislature go beyond the governor's proposed budget to invest in public higher education. When he announced the Excelsior Scholarship plan, you may have heard of it, the governor celebrated the transformative potential of CUNY and SUNY for our students and their critical role in the vitality of our communities. Despite the flaws in that scholarship, the fanfare around its announcement has put public higher education in New York in the spotlight. That creates an important opportunity: We have to insist that the investment in access—which the Excelsior Scholarship represents—be matched by an investment in quality. What kind of an education are we encouraging access to?

Surely it's not one in which adjunct faculty teach over half the courses. That is why the PSC's budget demand in Albany is for funding to hire 1,000 new full-timers across the university.

Surely it's not one in which the adjunct faculty are grossly underpaid. That is why the PSC's budget demand for Albany is for a move to $7,000 per-course average adjunct salary.

Surely it's not one in which full-time faculty are so overburdened by the teaching load that we fail to meet our goals in scholarship and student mentoring. That is why the PSC's budget demand in Albany is for $35 million to match the $35 million CUNY has requested from the city to reduce the teaching load of all full-time faculty across the university by three credits per year.

These are not only reasonable and economically viable demands, they are necessary to the quality of education we offer and the quality of our work lives. And they need not come at the expense of our students, on whom we have relied for too long as a just-in-time ATM machine to fill the holes left by the state’s budget cuts. I know that you all will join me and the Brooklyn College PSC Executive Committee in struggling for that vision of a sustainable, high-quality education and a flourishing environment in which to pursue our work. Thank you for your continued resilience and support, and be on the lookout for that final 1.5 percent salary increase from our contract settlement, taking effect on April 20.